There has long been a scholarly antiquarian regional interest in the Pennsylvania Dutch, as witnessed to by the many publications of the Pennsylvania German Society. And, certainly, popular interest in the “plain people” is nothing new. Indeed, a thriving tourist industry has been built upon the complex nostalgia of many Americans concerning the presumed simple and innocent lives of these “quaint” groups, especially the Amish. For many, the Amish seemingly have successfully resisted numerous aspects of modernization and, thus, hearken back to a simpler and purer time. The early work of John A. Hostetler provided important insider views of Amish society in an ethnographic vein. Since then, mainstream academic publications on the Pennsylvania Dutch have grown significantly in number. Much of the subsequent scholarship on the Amish, Mennonite, and “Dunkard” Brethren communities, however, has been heavily descriptive in nature, with a paucity of theoretical reflection. Powwowing Among the Pennsylvania Dutch falls into this corpus.

This study of “magico-religious” healing practices in southwestern and central Pennsylvania in the twentieth century fails to move far beyond description. When it does, it is less than satisfying. Kriebel asserts that “the chief value of this work is qualitative: to provide an appreciation for the powwower's art and practice and for the nuances of Pennsylvania culture and identity today” (viii). Unfortunately, his study falls flat for two main reasons: 1) it is theoretically weak and methodologically unsophisticated; and 2) it fails to locate Brauche (Pennsylvania Dutch ritual healing practices) in the broader cultural context of religious healing in the United States in the twentieth century.

These two weaknesses are interrelated. Although Kriebel's bibliography includes a handful of anthropological studies of ritual healing, including works by Sandra Lee Barney, Thomas J. Csordas, and Robert Hahn, he fails to engage even this limited number of studies in any serious way. A three-page appendix, “Theoretical Background” (223–225), is superficial. There one finds claims about “schemas” and “cultural models” and “inputs and outputs” that the author assumes to have explanatory power such as: “There are schemas for powwowing that are mediated through a larger cultural model of powwowing, which in turn is subordinated to a cultural model of healing existing within the Pennsylvania Dutch worldview. The difference between (simple) schemas and cultural models is that schemas may be held in short-term memory but cultural models cannot, because of their relative degree of elaboration” (225).

Readers of this study will find numerous instances of fuzzy argumentation and questionable procedure. Kriebel clearly wants readers to respect the Pennsylvania Dutch and to accept the reality and efficacy of Brauche, yet his defense consists largely of unsupported assertions. Throughout, he seeks not merely to deflect but to correct the criticism of powwowing offered by “scientific skeptics.” In his narrative, these folk function as straw men. Surprisingly, he also denounces the criticism of powwowing offered on religious grounds by some Pennsylvania Dutch groups (207–210). And he dismisses the theological basis of this criticism—something I would take to be an ethnographic datum—based on “the evidence” he claims to have gathered in his fieldwork. Terms and categories are employed without precision. For instance, throughout the study Kriebel uses the terms “magic” and “religion” without offering his own operative definitions of these.

Kriebel seems to think that his discovery that “powwowing” is still practiced in present-day Pennsylvania Dutch country is remarkable. I would suggest the opposite: it would have been remarkable if he had proven that these practices had completely disappeared. The survival of the practices Kriebel describes is no more remarkable than the fact that faith healing, the laying on of hands, and alternative forms of medicine and healing survive within twenty-first-century American Christianity. The practices studied here—ritual healing, curing, the creation of amulets, the recovery of lost items, binding animals and people, the casting of spells, and so on—utilize techniques transmitted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German magical texts (more recently available in English translations). These texts were themselves usually based on late medieval and early modern works from Europe.

Significantly, Pennsylvania Dutch practitioners today seek to distinguish themselves from New Age healers and herbalists, seeing their own practice as Bible-based. Yet, many Mennonites believe these practices to be inspired by the devil and, thus, look down on them. Other Dutchmen and -women (Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren) put little stock in these practices either way. In this, the Pennsylvania Dutch are no more homogeneous than most ethnic and religious groups. Yet, Kriebel would have his readers believe that somehow—precisely how is never clarified—Pennsylvania Dutch culture makes all the difference in making this an authentic tradition. Historians of religions will be disappointed by this study.